Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] [Docker] New GNU Radio images with GUI support

[Johnathan Corgan]

On Fri, Apr 8, 2016 at 6:12 AM, Ben Hilburn <address@hidden> wrote:

 

It seems like Docker could make it much easier for us to support a variety of operating systems - although the user would still need to install Docker, itself. Presumably that's easier than earlier containerized models, though (e.g., VMs).

 

I've been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work with GNU Radio and docker recently, mostly to beef up our automated test infrastructure.

There are a number of different use cases that overlap.  One is testing, as mentioned.  Another is "full installation of all GNU Radio, dev tools, and related items to do complete application development."  Yet a third is "minimal set of packages needed to execute a given GNU Radio application."

I'm working out a stratification of layers that build on one another, starting with an OS base layer, one adding minimal runtime packages, then adding minimum build time packages, then a full development layer.

I caution, though, the containers are not the answer to everything, and it's at least questionable whether providing a full dev environment as a container is useful to beginners.  There's enough work required "outside" the container (permissions, volumes, device mappings, networking config) that the user will still need to understand the internals of Docker before becoming productive.

That said, I'm very interested in feedback on what the community feels is useful vs. my own perceptions.

-Johnathan